XML

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XML

• Alyssa Roberts

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What is XML?

• Extensible Markup Language
• Specification to creating custom mark-up
  languages
• Simplified version of SGML, originally made for
  people with semantic constraints
• Extensible allows user to define mark-up
  elements
• SGML Standard Generalized Markup Language

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What does XML do?

• XML is used for sharing structured data
• Encoding documents (converting information into
  symbols to be communicated)
• Serializing data (converting an object to be
  stored as a fileor transferred across a network)
• Applications can be implemented in XML
• RSS, MathML, GraphML, MusicXML

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Whats it used for?

• In business, XBRL (based on XML)
• Transfers data easily
• Reporting financial results
• Some Banks use it
• Web Publishing, single source of data

XBRL Extensible Business Reporting Language
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Continued

• Government documentation, maps
• Airplane/car manufacturers maintenance booklets
• Common format for document storage/processing
• Supports Unicode and is based on international
  standards

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Examples

• RSS feeds (used to publish frequently updated
  works)
• News Websites(CNN)
• OpenOffice
• AbiWord
• Apples iWorkApplications

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Advantages

• Its universal
• Its based on SGML which has been around since
  1986 so theres a lot of experience and software
  available
• The structure is suitable for most documents

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Advantages

• Can be updated incrementally
• Strict syntax and parsing requirements make it
  simple, efficient, and consistent
• Its platform independent, so its immune to
  changes in technology and will work on any
  computer regardless of OS

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Compared to HTML

• XML is just data, whereas HTML is about creating
  pages and also how they should look
• XML has nothing to do with the appearance of what
  youre working with
• Its just data that you can manipulate and put
  where you want

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Essentially

• XML makes data transfer and storage much easier
• It has all the data in one place for you
• It can represent common computer science data
  structures (records, lists, trees)
• Efficient and simple